MicroStrategy Analytics Software

The MicroStrategy analytics platform is a cloud-based and on-premise self-service business intelligence platform that supports both data mining and visualization. The platform can be implemented on a gradual and as-needed basis, so users can start small and scale to enterprise-level deployment.

The MicroStrategy analytics platform supports dashboards that combine the functionality of multiple applications including dashboards that can monitor markets and company portfolios, conduct risk analysis and correlate real-time data analysis with information from news and social media. The solution helps users deliver information as operational reports, as hoc reports, invoices and statements. Users can design operational reports and statements using drag-and-drop functionality.

The MicroStrategy analytics platform supports multiple reporting styles and device types so that users can get their data as per the company needs. The product is priced on a metered or named-user basis. The mobile version is priced on a named-user and CPU core basis.

A comprehensive but complex BI tool

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Pros

Microstrategy is a world leader when it comes to BI and analytics. The tool is great for large-scale deployments where many aspects of the business need to be considered.

Cons

While catering to all potential BI and analytics needs, Microstrategy seriously lacks when it comes to ease of use. Competitors like Power BI and Sisense have made deployment of BI tool extremely easy and in comparison, Microstrategy feels lacklustre.

Strong mobile reporting platform

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Microstrategy is a great platform for mobile analytics and offers a lot of functionality out of the box. If you are looking for a solution that will cover 80% of your needs when it comes to mobile reporting then seriously consider Microstrategy.

Version 10.x is really powerful

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N/A

I've been testing the latest version 10 and it is really good, it has new features to create dashboards in an easy and quickly way more similar to what the market for self service BI is requiring

Pros

Good design, easy to use, development is really fast letting you select the data and object that you want to visualize and therefore just create a dashboard within seconds.

Cons

The best is to have a well designed data model first or a data warehouse to pull the data and just do some of the latest transformation with the tool, that way you can get the most of it.

Advice to Others

Definetiley a good competitor in this sector, I like the responsive design, mobility and ease of use they have enhanced in this versions I tested.

Mario from Achievers
Specialty: Human Resources

December 2015

December 2015

MicroStrategy 10 is outstanding

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Likes Best

The technology is great. Even though this is one of the legacy BI vendors, their technology has kept up with the newer vendors.

Likes Least

The support has been slow for the past year or so.

Recommendations

If money is not an issue, MicroStrategy should be seriously considered. The features it offers are among the most complete. If simple reporting is needed, MicroStrategy may be too expensive. The problem is, reporting usually gets more sophisticated as time goes by, and sometimes it's hard to predict how complex it will get from the beginning. If your company needs for instance, language support, some of the new tools like Birst need you to manuallly do translations by duplicating projects. If you are also concerned about a centralized approach and reliable security, performance and scalability, MicroStrategy is the way to go.

Jenni from HPM
Specialty: Healthcare / Social Services

December 2015

December 2015

Very high-end

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Likes Best

This software is loaded with features/functionality; I don't think I've run into anything that it just can't do. Their training and user forums are also extremely helpful.

Likes Least

Very steep learning curve for administration/development and requires very knowledgeable support staff to get and keep it going. I think that is to be expected with such a complex product however for a smaller company it can present challenges.

Recommendations

It seems like it is great for either very small organizations that want to maybe just use some of the basic functionality/cloud version or large organizations with a team that can be well-trained and dedicated to support/maintenance. If you don't have people you can dedicate to send to the training (which was free for us) and to work with it on a regular basis then purchasing this software may be "biting off more than you can chew".

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December 2018

December 2018

Helpful tool for Business Analytics

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The overall experience was good. I used it for about 1 year while I was working for Business Analytics.

Pros

I like the desktop version of it more. Its very easy to create metrics and use them in different reports. Multiple people can work together on a particular project.

Cons

Get small bugs that really trouble sometimes. Also, the customer support is not very robust. There are forums but cannot find trusted answers to all the problem-related queries.

Review Source: Capterra

November 2018

November 2018

Really Improved with recent updates

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I used to not be a fan of microstrategy’s analytics / BI software, but they seem to really listen to their customers and improve their software with every release. I especially like the enhancements to the geographic data features and visualizations in their recent release. Turning GIS data into an aesthetic map chart is simple now.

Cons

While microstrategy’s software has improved greatly in recent releases, I still think the forecasting functionality could be improved. You can’t do as much with forecasting in this software than you can in some competing software.

Review Source: Capterra

October 2018

October 2018

BI Analytics Reporting Tool

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We use microstrategy to create custom dashboards for internal use and for our customers. We are able to create SSO from our customer portal to microstrategy to allow our customers to have access to their dashboards. With microstrategy you are able to provide summary level dashboards with links that allow you to click to drill down to receive further details. We are also able to provide links so the user can export the reports to excel so they can further filter the information as needed. The creation of cubes enables us to have the data calculations ready and available to reduce the response time to present dashboards to the end user.

Cons

Our customers would like to be able to subscribe to receive scheduled emails of their dashboards versus having to login to our portal to view the information. We have not be able to figure out how to provide them this feature.

Numbers mean everything

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I enjoy having the ability to run custom reports that help me understand how my staff is behaving on the phones. Exporting that data is a breeze, overall a great product.

Cons

It can be intimidating for new users, better integration of help functions would be appreciated.

Review Source: Capterra

Hasin from Parsons ELab

June 2018

June 2018

A good BI solution for big data work

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- Allowed me to query big data

Pros

Microstrategy has the ability to integrate with multiple data sources across the board from all channels of your companies data streams.

Cons

It is definitely not as easy to learn as tableu. The learning curve is a little steep but people switching from tableau should face couple of weeks of challenges.

Review Source: Capterra

Mohammed from Freelancer

June 2018

June 2018

It's not bad

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Pros

It has some good graphs, and you can add your own ones. Intelligent Cubes are the only unique feature I've seen it in this BI tool. It has a good community.

Cons

Dealing with SQL queries, and Microsoft Access was difficult, and probably result in an error. Even though the query was 100% correct. It generates wrong values for the query I used. I think I prefer another tool.

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The reliability was key. We had to refresh data weekly for over 2,000 dealerships and had many thousands of users, so it was important the dashboards were working 100% of the time.

Cons

It was difficult for our team to make updates to the dashboards when requested by our clients. Also, custom reports were a bit dofficult to create and schedule. Still a good reporting product, though, and a great value for the money because you can display all sorts of data in different ways (bar chart, pie chart, trend lines).

Review Source: Capterra

April 2018

April 2018

I studied the competition to see if this product was up to the other BI leaders (gartner).

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you can set different user roles and levels easily. I was able to advise on this product

Pros

It works with the main Operative System, it doesn't need a expensive hardware to run. Excellent training program (not too expensive). It is easy to automate the sending of reports to user lists (great the report tool too because allow you to switch from a table to a chart in real time). It is a web based solution so it is accessible from any device from anywhere. generally user friendly because it helps the user to create the data cloud without having a thorough technical knowledge of SQL or programming. It is compatible with most data sources with connectors.
An important and unique feature is that of being able to insert comments, note and share the analysis.

Cons

It takes a long time to configure the software the first time (installation and connection to server). Old-fashioned design, the Desktop environment can be a bit more intuitive and quick.
Has a licensing system that is a bit too complicated. It should be improved data export functionality.

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Easy sending

Pros

Scalable MicroStrategy was a helpful tool for providing daily, monthly, and quarterly reporting due to the ability to build automated reports that can be sent to large groups of people using distribution lists.,data from multiple SOR sources in the organization helped in monitoring our SLA management. security features to allow the report to be used by multiple roles and levelsMobile functionality

Cons

users not having ability to make changes to metrics and attributes without having to rely to heavily on MicroStrategy developers, it would make the product a great dea and more useful.

Review Source: Capterra

October 2017

October 2017

Great reporting and analytics tool!

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The dashboards and reports that MicroStrategies is able to produce are beautiful, insightful, actionable, and informative. We have been using them for portfolio management and production reporting for several years and are pretty happy.

Cons

The setup can be cumbersome and the software did take awhile to learn. It's not incredibly intuitive like some of the programs I have used in the past, but the results are worth the efforts.

Easy to use and very appealing interface

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We have a reliable and appealing platform to report our daily results. MicroStrategy also allow to implement changes and add new data and objects in a matter of minutes into our production platform.

Pros

It is faster to implement and do not require too much customization. Most of the widgets and features are ready to use. The admin and user interfaces are intuitive and they do not generate errors or bugs during installation or heavy use by the end users. Very stable and reliable platform.

Cons

Price. They initial investment is higher comparing to another bundle software (Power BI, Tableau). However, the extra licensing is not very expensive since we can pay by active user. There is also a free end-user product (Desktop) that is focus on analytic end-users that do not require to modify objects but accessing dashboards and reports.

Review Source: Capterra

Abhijit from Informatica LLC

June 2017

June 2017

Reporting made easy for the business user.

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Insight into operations and licensing without needing the internal data warehouse knowledge

Pros

The software is very easy to use with an uncluttered interface and generating reports is a breeze. The option to share and schedule reports helps to be on top of business, across multiple users and teams.

Cons

The app could use some UI modernization. A mobile app to look at reports and dashboards would be great.

Review Source: Capterra

John from RPI

December 2016

December 2016

MicroStrategy Review

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Used for BI reporting capabilities. We were able to generate dynamic reports utilizing a plethora of fields determined by the business. Ability to drag and drop fields into columns or rows, drill down/expand, and export information as needed.

Great tool, free desktop was a bonus!

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Using this tool, to learn and get into enterprise analytics was fun. The free desktop version also allowed folks to analyze excel and other data sources. this gave them some useful utility to look their own data and seeing trends.

Pros

quick to learn and start using from no experience. The videos on you-tube also helped pickup some of the concepts. The free desktop tool, also had a good guide and videos to get started.

Great tool

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Hello, Microstrategy is a great tool for Business Intelligence. Many years after the beginning of the company, they knew how to follow up their product.
Best product in terms of self-service bi, vizualization, reporting and scalability !
We've tested a lot of reporting tools ( BO, Qkvw, Tableau, Oracle) but none of them are better on the full list of functionalities of Microstrategy.

Pros

Number of functionnalities compared to challenger

Cons

Before the v10, Microstrategy was late on specific topics but now they did the good investment for the future.

Advice to Others

Good strategy, good visibility and very strong product, happy to be a Microstrategy customer.